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Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote “Universal Soldier” in the basement of the Purple Onion, a Toronto coffee house, in the early sixties. The Highwaymen cut it first, in September 1963; her own recording followed on her debut, It’s My Way!, on Vanguard the next April; Donovan and Glen Campbell took it into the charts in 1965. She has called it a song about individual responsibility for war – not the generals or the politicians but the soldier himself, and everyone who sends him.
Written by Buffy Sainte-Marie. Buffy Sainte-Marie: vocal and guitar. From It’s My Way!, Vanguard Records, 1964. Photograph: Union Civil War Soldier, in Studio, Standing by Table, unknown maker, 1860s, tintype. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2019.
- №
- NMU 260122
- artist
- Buffy Sainte-Marie
- title
- Universal Soldier
- from
- It’s My Way! (1964)
- writer
- Buffy Sainte-Marie
- first cut
- The Highwaymen, 1963
- also
- Donovan · Glen Campbell, 1965
- label
- Vanguard
- photograph
- Union Civil War Soldier, tintype, 1860s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- listen
- buffysainte-marie.com
- filed
- January 22, 2026
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